feudal society, a rapid development.

  The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was
monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing
wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The
guild-masters were pushed aside by the manufacturing middle class;
division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished
in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

  Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even
manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery
revolutionized industrial production. The place of manufacture was
taken by the giant, modern industry, the place of the industrial
middle class, by industrial millionaires- the leaders of whole
industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

  Modern industry has established the world market, for which the
discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense
development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This
development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry;
and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways
extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed,
increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class
handed down from the Middle Ages.

  We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the
product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in
the modes of production and of exchange.

  Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a
corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class
under the sway of the feudal nobility, it became an armed and
self-governing association in the mediaeval commune:* here independent
urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there, taxable "third
estate" of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of
manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute
monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact,
corner stone of the great monarchies in general. The bourgeoisie has
at last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world
market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state,
exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

  *"Commune" was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even
before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local
self-government and political rights as the "Third Estate."
Generally speaking, for the economic development of the bourgeoisie,
England is here taken as the typical country; for its political
development, France.

  The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history.

  The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly
torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural
superiors," and has left no other bond between man and man than
naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the
most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous
enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of
egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into
exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible
chartered freedoms has set up that single, unconscionable freedom-
Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and
political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct,
brutal exploitation.

  The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto
honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the
physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science,
into its paid wage labourers.

  The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

  The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal
display of vigour in the Middle Ages which reactionaries so much
admire found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It
has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has
accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman
aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that
put in the shade all former migrations of nations and crusades.

  The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing
the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of
production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation
of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary,
the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of
all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation
distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,
fast-frozen relations with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions are swept away; all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts in air, all
that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with
sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his
kind.

  The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases
the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle
everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.